As Domestic Violence Awareness Month nears its end, organizations like
the California Coalition for Battered Women in Prison are calling
loudly for the mass pardoning of "battered" women who have been
convicted of first-degree murder.

PC feminists should instead take a real stand against gender violence
and abandon the Battered Woman Syndrome -- a legal defense used to
exonerate women who kill abusive men in the absence of imminent
danger.

BWS claims that battered women are psychologically traumatized and
therefore not responsible for their violent actions. Thus, a battered
woman is not held responsible for murdering her abuser in his sleep,
as in the much cited court case State of North Carolina v. Judy Ann
Laws Norman or in the movie
The Burning Bed. BWS sidesteps the long
established principle that only a clear and imminent danger to life
can justify murder, especially the premeditated variety.

Controversy swirls over whether BWS even exists or is a creation of
feminist politics. Whatever is true, BWS is a legal defense available
to women and de facto denied to men. Both women and men should be held
equally accountable for their acts of violence. The courts should not
bar anyone from a valid legal defense -- but is BWS valid?

BWS is more than a demand for compassion. As a woman who was severely
battered, empathy is my first reaction. But compassion toward a
murderer does not justify her act. BWS is being politically used to
make cause celebres out of women who make the most reprehensible
choice possible -- the cold-blooded killing of another human being.

Consider the case of the self-confessed serial killer Aileen Wuornos,
a prostitute recently executed by the state of Florida for murdering
seven men. Wuornos initially claimed that the men, all killed within a
year's span, were customers against whom she was defending herself.
She later recanted and told the judge: "I am guilty as can be. I want
the world to know I killed these men -- as cold as ice. I've hated
human beings for a long time." Wuornos' motive was also robbery.

Seven human beings who were never convicted of a crime -- indeed, who
were accused of one only by a murderess, thief and liar -- received
private death sentences. They were dismissed by a media which would
have eagerly examined every detail of the victims had they been
female.

By contrast, Wuornos has been the subject of movies, a documentary, a
play, and an opera sympathetic to the murderess and dismissive or
hostile to her victims. The play, entitled Self-Defense (or The Death
of Some Salesmen), presents the murderess as a martyr. She is a
symbolic reminder that men abuse women. Lest anyone miss that message,
the policeman who arrests Jolene Palmer (the Wuornos character) states
his motives, "White, middle-aged men are at risk!"

The opera, entitled Wuornos, is a self-consciously political
justification of murdering men. Pointing a finger of blame at Wuornos'
allegedly abusive father and distant grandfather, the opera advertises
itself as "the rage of one woman" speaking "for centuries of pain."
Wuornos is described as "a woman who makes the ultimate sacrifice for
the love of her life -- another woman." This refers to the fact that
Wuornos had been persuaded to confess her guilt by her lesbian lover.

Such presentations hit hard upon the tragic childhood of Wuornos. But
the goal does not seem to be compassion or understanding of the human
condition. After all, no compassion or understanding is extended to
the dead men or their families. The message is clear: the men deserved
to die.

In her essay, "Sexual Violence Against Women and a Woman's Right to
Self-Defense: The Case of Aileen Carol Wuornos," the renowned radical
feminist Phyllis Chesler provides "statistics" and theory to support
this message.

Without citing sources, Chesler explains, "According to contemporary
studies, 90 percent of all violent crimes are still committed by men.
... When those women who commit 10 percent of all violent crimes do
kill, nearly half kill male intimates who have abused them or their
children, and they invariably do so in self-defense." [Emphasis
added]

Chesler's statistics do not seem to apply to spousal killing. The
Department of Justice's "Murder in Families" study found "among black
marital partners ... 47 percent of the black spouse victims were
husbands and 53 percent were wives. Among white victims ... 38 percent
of the victims were husbands and 62 percent were wives." It is also
difficult to understand how Chesler knows that battered women
invariably murder in self-defense, not in anger or for revenge.

I keep returning to the least discussed aspect of BWS. The men who
deserved a trial before being executed: Were they, in fact, guilty?

Wuornos did not endorse the opera that eulogizes the murder of men,
although she was asked repeatedly to do so. Before she died, Wuornos
expressed great remorse for the pain she had caused the families of
her victims. What does it say about PC feminists when a serial killer
who hates mankind shows more decency than they can manage?

Wendy McElroy is the editor of ifeminists.com and a research fellow
for The Independent Institute in Oakland, Calif. She is the author
and editor of many books and articles, including the new book,
Liberty for Women: Freedom and Feminism in the 21st Century (Ivan R.
Dee/Independent Institute, 2002
[hardback or
paperback]).
She lives with her husband in Canada

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